A growing number of Democrats in the Senate are ready to offer up a key concession on Medicare to try to reach a deal on the fiscal cliff: higher premium payments for wealthy seniors.

But that might not get them very far.

Means testing won’t reduce Medicare costs enough for Republicans who want a big deal on entitlements and the idea still outrages some liberal Democrats in the House and Senate who fear that it’s a foot in the door to much deeper cuts to the senior-citizen health care program.

And even though Democrats are open to this one cost cutting move, they are saying no to increasing the eligibility age on Medicare; no to touching Social Security; and no to cutting into Medicaid programs that cover the poor and disabled. Many of these concerns were voiced directly by liberals to White House economic adviser Gene Sperling in a closed-door Senate Democratic lunch on Thursday.

Yet as an olive branch to Republicans, a number of Senate Democrats are ready to drop their long-standing opposition to Medicare means testing if it means the GOP will raise taxes on the top 2 percent of wage earners and if it’s part of a large, deficit reduction plan.

But there is an overwhelming opposition in the Senate and House Democratic caucuses to going any further, showing just how little room President Barack Obama has to maneuver as he tries to reach a deal with House Speaker John Boehner on the fiscal cliff.

“I think people would get pretty excited,” said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) when asked how Hill Democrats would respond to an Obama-endorsed deal with entitlement cuts. “Labor fought hard for this president, they were doing everything they could to help organize, to get the early vote out. This is one of their big issues. The president is going to turn his back on labor? I don’t think so.”

Asked how Democrats would respond if Obama agreed to raise the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67, Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said bluntly, “Very badly.”

Obama has been willing to dip into entitlements in the past, which makes some liberal Democrats nervous. He agreed tentatively to raising the Medicare age in last summer’s ill-fated debt-ceiling talks with Boehner. And he proposed additional means testing in Medicare in his deficit reduction plan. The idea also made an appearance in last year’s deficit-reduction list between Vice President Joe Biden and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

In previous talks, Obama has also floated the idea of changing the method of calculating inflation for government programs, a proposal that Democratic critics fear could slash too deeply into Social Security benefits. As part of this round of talks, Obama has offered up $600 billion in cuts to health-based entitlement programs and non-mandatory programs, a proposal that includes $350 billion from overhauling bulk purchases of prescription drugs as well as Medicare means testing.

But, he’s demanding $1.4 trillion in new taxes, including by raising tax rates on families who earn more than $250,000 annually. Boehner has floated $800 billion in new taxes from closing unspecified loopholes and deductions as well as $1 trillion in cuts, including out of entitlement programs.

Medicare means testing is hardly a new idea, and in fact it’s already happening — under Obamacare and the 2003 law that created the Medicare prescription drug benefit. The idea is to expand it — and Republicans are increasingly pushing for it as a way to counter Democratic attacks that they’re only worried about protecting the rich.

Both the White House and House Republicans released proposals in 2012 that would require more seniors to pay an income-related premium. House Republicans would have reduced the income level from $85,000 to $80,000 for individuals and $170,000 to $160,000 for couples. The White House would have charged more to the wealthiest 25 percent of seniors. Obama’s means-testing plan would have saved $20 billion over 10 years, but other plans have been estimated to save $240 billion.

Traditionally, many Democrats have resisted the idea of means testing, arguing that Medicare should be a basic, guaranteed right for all seniors. They say that it’s a slippery slope— once you start tying Medicare to income, you risk it becoming a de facto welfare program.
But some are coming around to the idea.

“I don’t generally like means testing but I can see that as something in a final deal,” said Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, a liberal Democrat and close ally of organized labor. “But not if it means raising the retirement age, not if it means [implementing cuts to Social Security], not if it means shifting costs to seniors. There’s ways of talking about means testing.”

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said he’s open to means testing if it’s part of a comprehensive package.

“I think it’s a reasonable thing to be thinking about how to make it more progressive and fair,” he said.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said he’s more open to means testing than moving the entitlement age from 65 to 67.

“It’s more fair,” he said.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) are advocates of the proposal, and other liberals are open to it as well.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said he was “sympathetic” to the idea, and Maryland Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin added, “I’m not opposed.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters Thursday Democrats were willing to “take some look at cuts,” and he cited the $700 billion the party already cut out of Medicare in the passage of the health care law in 2010.

But by no means are all Democrats on board. Opposition is especially strong in the House.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that Democrats have already “addressed the issue of entitlements.”

“We already took over $700 billion in savings in Medicare, pumped it right back into Medicare to lengthen its strength for at least a decade as well as increasing benefits now,” she said.

Asked about means testing, Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) added: “I would have a very hard time with that. I do not know why seniors would be asked to be the first to sacrifice the most.”

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said seniors with incomes above $85,000 are already means-tested — and that threshold shouldn’t be lowered.

“We need to make a decision about what’s rich,” she said. “For tax rates, we’re saying $250,000 is the end of the middle class. For Medicare we already say $85,000 is rich. So in my view, means testing — we don’t need to do it more.”

And Harkin said “absolutely not” when asked if he could be open to means testing for Medicare beneficiaries.

“I have been forthright, [three] things should not be involved in a fiscal cliff discussion — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security,” Harkin said.

While Republicans say that means testing is a first step, they argue it’s only the tip of the iceberg, since the three entitlement programs, as well as the children’s health care program, eat up about 41 percent of an annual budget of $3.6 trillion. They say that Medicare is in such a crunch that more structural reforms are necessary.

“It isn’t enough but it’s one of those things that we should be doing,” said Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.), who is open to backing a plan with higher revenue. “I just think there’s a point at which we need to take care of more of our own health care costs. A poor widow out there, a poor couple — you’re not going to do means testing there. But I do think means testing makes sense.”

There is already some means testing in Medicare, but today, only 3-3.5 percent of seniors are hit with the so-called income-related premiums. The prescription drug benefits and coverage for doctor or outpatient visits are based slightly on income. Hospital coverage is provided to everyone without regard to income.

Only about 3 percent of Medicare Part D beneficiaries — those with incomes above $88,900 — pay the income-related higher premiums on their drug costs, according to a report by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. And only 3.5 percent of beneficiaries — those making over $85,000 for an individual or $170,000 for a couple — pay the higher premiums for doctor and outpatient visits.

The prospects for a major deal appear to be increasingly bleak, and Durbin said Thursday the White House informed him that raising the Medicare eligibility age is “no longer being considered” by Obama. But Democrats are still plainly nervous that Obama will be overly generous on entitlement cuts in his negotiations with Boehner.

At a private lunch meeting in the Senate Mansfield room on Thursday, liberal independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont bluntly told Sperling to make sure that Social Security benefits aren’t cut and that Obama doesn’t raise the eligibility age of Medicare, saying such ideas would amount to a “disaster,” senators said afterward.

Asked later if Sperling alleviated his concerns, Sanders would only give a one-word response.